Daily Archives: Monday 15 February 2010

At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families.

In the second part of his review column, he switches genre almost as far has he can, moving from the sheer nastiness of corruption in the New South Wales police in the 1980s and 1990s, to the joy of Sesame Street, with its unfailing commitment to good television for pre-school children. Again, he uses the words “us” and “we” – a mode that includes his readers in the experience. He is enthusiastic about Sesame Street, and he kindled the same enthusiasm in me, making me remember that from its beginning, Sesame Street was revolutionary.

It was a revelation and showed us that children are sophisticated viewers: they have a shrewd sense of fact and fantasy and are active interpreters of plot.

I felt as though I had been drawn into the group of people that admired and ‘enjoyed’ Underbelly, and rejoiced in Sesame Street.

Until the last sentence.

And the TV sets came out of the cupboards where our feminist wives had hidden them.

That “us” and “our” and “we”? He was only speaking to people who have wives.* Not to me at all. And somehow, I don’t think he had lesbian women with wives in mind at all, when he was prattling on with his inclusive pronouns.

Feminist blogging

Mary Astell

If all men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men, be the perfect Condition of Slavery? and if the Essence of Freedom consists, as our Masters say it does, in having a standing Rule to live by?

The Out Campaign

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